


Starlight

by Flammenkobold



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 03:45:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13205190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flammenkobold/pseuds/Flammenkobold
Summary: After being back on earth for a few months, Minkowski has a job offer for Eiffel, drinks and awkward conversations are shared in front of a ratty old sofa.





	Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Wolf359bb2017 and finished/posted before the finale. So definitely not canon compliant.

She parks the car outside of Eiffel’s house and allows herself to linger for a moment. She isn’t one for indecision, but it feels like she needs a moment to take everything in, to let her nervousness settle.

Eiffel’s house is a small, shabby thing with dirty windows and paint peeling off the wooden planks of the exterior wall. It got a small fence around it at the front, with overgrowing plants that look brown and dusty in the slowly setting sun. Everything here looks brown and dusty, Renée has to admit, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Still, it could almost be called derelict and unoccupied. Except the fence is meticulously repaired and there is a new pick-up truck parked in the open garage. So someone is living here, she just hopes that this person is really Eiffel. He wasn’t easy to pin down, even with some of the resources she has now at her disposal. Not that he tried to purposefully stay off the grid, but more like seeking recluse, which was not something she thought he’d do. Not after having had to listen to hours of him talking about all the things he was going to do, back on earth.

Then again, by the time they did get back to earth, he wasn’t exactly the same guy anymore, who only dreamed about tacos and striptease bars and the newest movie releases. She wasn’t exactly the same person either.

Renée watches the house for a few moments before deciding that this really isn’t the appropriate approach and energetically opens her car door. She steps out and smoothes out the dress she put on this morning, trying to get rid of at least some of the creases and then makes her way up to the porch.

The doorbell looks broken, so she just knocks. Some paint comes loose under her knuckles and drifts to the floor. There isn’t any response from the other side, so she knocks a bit harder.

Still nothing.

“Eiffel?” she yells.

At last there is a soft rustling sound behind the door, but still no one is opening it.

“Eiffel! Open the door!” She waits for a moment longer, “I know you are there.” Still no reaction.

“Eiffel, I swear-”

“One moment!” A muffled voice comes through the door and she hears him unlocking it. A second later the door creaks open and she sees Doug Eiffel blinking owlishly down at her. “Commander?” he asks.

“Technically it’s captain now,” she says, lacking better words at the sight of him and how her heart squeezes together in something like homesickness.

“Congratulation?” he says, still staring wide eyed at her, like she is some kind of apparition. The moment draws out, stretching the silence almost uncomfortably, until something snaps. From one moment to the next she finds herself crushed into a hug, or perhaps she crushes him in a hug, she isn’t sure. The hug is a bit awkward, just like their hugs have always been, but this time it’s not so much the timing as the lack of zero gravity. She’s aware how much taller he actually is than her.

She squeezes him tightly and he starts coughing dramatically.

“Air! Air is a nice option!” He says, but makes no move to actually get out of the hug. She still slowly releases him and looks into his smiling face. “Hey there,” he says a bit more softly and takes here in. “Wow,” he adds, eyes glued to the dress.

Perhaps she should have gone with her uniform after all. “Eiffel,” she says warningly and he slowly looks up at her face again.

“You sure you’re you?” he asks.

“Eiffel!”

He lifts both of his hands. “Just saying. You’re wearing a dress!”

“I’m aware.”

“You. Are. Wearing. A. Dress.” he repeats slower and Renée rolls her eyes.

“Yes Eiffel, thanks for stating the obvious!”

“No, I mean, you in a dress. Willingly. A dress with flowers on it. Does not compute.”

“Oh shut up,” she says and deeply regrets her choice of attire, despite the scorching heat.

“You’re sure you haven’t been attacked by body snatchers? Replaced by a Stepford wife?” She punches him in the arm, perhaps a bit harder than is necessary and he yelps, rubbing the spot where she hit him.

“Okay, point taken, you’re definitely Commander- ehh, Captain Renée Minkowski,” he declares and gives her another bright smile. She’s quietly pleased that he gets her name right and corrects himself on her rank. Not that she would tell him.

“Thank you! For confirming I’m me,” she tells him sarcastically instead.

“You’re welcome,” he says and for a moment they just stand there awkwardly, still smiling at each other. “Uhh, you want to come in?” he finally asks. “It’s a bit untidy, though.”

That, she finds out, is a bit of an understatement. There are clothes strewn around interspersed with unidentifiable electronics and mechanical equipment, decorated with a ton of empty energy drink cans. The small table in the living room is piled with, what she hopes, are empty pizza boxes and more cans.

She just raises an eyebrow at him and doesn’t comment. Eiffel raises his hands in defense.

“Hey, I warned you,” he says. “Just give me a second,” he adds and vanishes through an open door, she thinks leads to the kitchen, leaving her to stand in the living room. She hears him rustling around in there for a second. “Do you want something to drink?” he yells, just as she pokes a dubious looking can with her shoes. She wishes she really put something other on than a dress and ballet pumps. Steel caps and military trousers seem like they would have been a saver choice.

“Do you have something that isn’t Red Bull or Mountain Dew?” she yells back.

“Hang on a second!”

She hears the fridge open and close and then Eiffel is back out of the kitchen, a black plastic bag in one hand and a glass bottle in the other, that contains dubious looking content. He hands the glass bottle to her.

“Don’t worry, it’s homemade lemonade from the old lady down the road,” he says and starts to swipe the empty boxes and cans from the small table into the plastic bag.

“Thanks,” she says and eyes the yellowy content with bits of what hopefully is lemon floating in it. She hasn’t seen any other house for miles around here. “I’m good.”

Eiffel doesn’t bother to bring the bag outside and instead throws it into a corner, before unceremoniously sweeping dirty clothes from the couch.

“What?” He asks her, when he notices the way she looks at him. She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose and shakes her head.

“Never mind,” she says and carefully sits on the couch. Only to jump up a second later. “What-! Eiffel! What the absolute hell is wrong with this couch?”

Eiffel at least has the decency to look embarrassed. “Uh, I guess this is why I kept all the stuff on it?” he says sheepishly as he eyes the loose spring poking through the upholstery, where Renée sat just seconds ago. “We can sit on the floor, it doesn’t bite,” he offers and Renée takes a deep breath, ready to go off on him.

Instead she feels a laugh starting to break free, one that feels overdue by a long time.

“You’re a disaster,” she tells him between bouts of giggles. “You know that?”

He watches her with fondness in his eyes. “Needs one to know one,” he retorts. She picks up an object of unidentifiable shape and material and throws it in his general direction.

“Help! Help! I’m getting murdered in my own home,” Eiffel exclaims dramatically, hands held high above his head, but he is bursting out into laughter too.

When Renée finally catches her breath, she does sit down on the floor in front of the couch. Eiffel follows her suit.

“See nothing biting you here,” he says.

“Only if you don’t have any spiders living under there,” she says in return and watches him squirm slightly away from the couch with a mildly horrified expression crossing his face.

“Don’t even joke about that,” he mutters.

She raises a mocking eyebrow at him and the bottle of unidentifiable liquid to her mouth. It doesn’t taste half as bad as she expected. In fact, it does taste really good. It’s made out of actual lemon and not too sweet.

When she put it down again, she can feel Eiffel’s eyes on her, but the second she glances over, he looks away quickly. There is a moment of awkwardness between them. The awkwardness isn’t quite new, but this is. Renée regrets again for putting on a dress. She feels off-kilter, army pants and combat boots would at least help her to feel less vulnerable.

She directs her gaze to the still open kitchen door. From the couch she can see the fridge. It’s a monstrosity, which at one point might have been gleaming, but there is a patina of dust on it and there are scratches from years of use, and probably years of storage, on the surface. There is only one piece of paper taped to the door, which looks like a child’s drawing.

“How are you, Eiffel?” she asks into the stretching silence.

He shifts next to her, crosses his long legs. “Me? I’m fine. Peachy keen,” he says. If there is one thing Renée has learned in her life, it’s that no one ever uses peachy keen if they are actually doing fine. “Got all the money thanks to Mega Evil Corp, so I can buy all the pizza, don’t need to worry about work and can watch everything I’ve missed in the years stuck on doomed mission MIR.”

And that’s it isn’t it? They got money now, thanks to the lawsuit against Goddard Futuristics; and despite it being duly earned it still feels a lot like their silence has been bought. Goddard Futuristics is dismantled and most of the upper management in prison or properly dead. Still, there is always this nagging feeling at the back of her head when she buys something with the compensation money. Eiffel probably feels the same.

“You’re fine, huh?”

“Yep,” he says, popping the p.

“Okay, fine.”

“Yes, fine,” he says. “How about you?”

She hums. “Me? I’m fine too.”

“Nice. Everything’s fine then.”

“Yep,” she says, popping her p too.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

They fall back into silence. Renée takes another sip from her bottle and stares at the lonely drawing on the fridge.

“This is stupid,” they say in unison.

Renée meets his eyes for a second and then they’re both laughing.

“But seriously, how are you?” she tries again.

Eiffel looks down at his soda can and shrugs. “Alive, mostly,” he jokes, but there is a undertone to his jovial facade that she doesn’t like.

“Really? That’s the answer you’re going with? Really?”

He looks at her and there is something almost furious in his face that takes her aback for a second.

“Really. How are you? I mean aside from the promotion and the-” his eyes flicker for a second over her again, distracted, “-and the, the dress.”

“I’m fine, Eiffel,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Great, we’re fine then. Both of us. Riddle solved. If you came here to ask this, you now have an answer. Wait why are you here?” He asks, his meandering thoughts settling on the one thing she’d hoped he wouldn’t pick up on too fast.

She takes another sip from her bottle.

“You’re not here to ask how I am. I mean you could have done this over the phone. Which by the way, you never used to call me.”

“You didn’t call me either,” she retorts, trying to deflect from the brief moment of guilt she feels. After returning back to Earth, they’ve seen each other a total of two times outside the courtroom, and one of them was some party or the other, where they spent about ten minutes in each others company, uninterrupted by strangers.

“Yeah, well, lots to do,” he mumbles, staring down at his can in embarrassment.

“I can see that.”

“Haha, Comm- Captain,” he says and runs a hand through his hair. “God, that’s weird, calling you Captain.”

“You know you could just call me by my name, Doug,” she tells him.

“So what are you doing here, Renée?” he says and winces. She shifts on her place, feeling something too warm and too tight settle in her chest. “Okay, that that- feels. Min- Minkowski. So what are you doing here?” He finally settles on.

There could be a million ways she could start this, or explain what she is doing here. But despite speaking four languages fluently, words have never been her strongest suit.

“I’m going back to the Hephaestus. Or what’s left of it.”

Eiffel’s head shoots up so fast, he spills part of his energy drink on himself, and stares at her.

“What?”

“You heard me Eiffel.”

“No, I clearly did not,” he grouses. “It sounded like you’re saying you’re going back to the death trap in the sky, but that can’t be right.” He gives a little, crazed laugh.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. “It is. I’m going back to the Hephaestus.”

“What? How? Why?”

She settles on answering the easier questions of those. “NASA and ESA a organizing a mission to see what is still left and to set up a new contact outpost. They asked me to lead the mission.”

“Let me repeat that: Why?”

“They want to make sure that the next time we get contacted by aliens, it’s not through an extremely shady private organization. And they asked me because I’m qualified”

Eiffel looks at her aghast. “Why? I mean why? Why did you say yes?”

She fiddles with the worn label on the bottle, that spoke of someone reusing it, but not going through the effort to properly remove the remnants of its previous use.

“Why not?” She feels childish saying it, but any other answer would be too personal for comfort.

There was nothing that kept her on this planet, and there were days when the gravity of the Earth made her feel trapped and heavy. That despite everything she still dreamed about the stars in between the nightmares. That she dreamed about reaching out and touching them, about drifting through space, about flying without anything binding her to the ground. Goddard Futuristics had taken a lot from her, but the one thing they could never take from her was this. The dream of flying, the dream of floating through space and touching the stars. That desire to go there and see them for herself.

She learned that back here, in the months and months back on this tiny blue dot in the universe. Renée Minkowski had never been made to be earthbound, she’d realized that too. And if her only chance was to return to space in a tin can that brought her back to the place that still frequently featured in her nightmares, then so be it. She’d never been one to run away from her fears, so she wouldn’t start now.

Eiffel keeps staring at her and then attempts to change tactics, his voice a little more high-pitched when he asks: “And Mr. Koudelka is fine with that? That you decided to return to the can of never ending nightmare fuel?”

She still refrains from looking directly at Eiffel, staring at the motes of lemon drifting in her bottle, and shrugs. “It’s not up to him, is it?”

“I mean, he’s your husband? And he just got you back from certain death?”

Her lips thin and she doesn’t say anything, just waits for Eiffel to come to his own conclusions and hopefully the right one.

For once he doesn’t disappoint.

“Wait… he’s still your husband. Right? Right?”

“Not as of tomorrow,” she says.

“Sooooooo-”

“Eiffel, I don’t want to- look it’s nothing.”

“It’s nothing? You’re getting a divorce and it’s nothing?” His voice wasn’t unkind and that was the worst. Eiffel was trying, not well, but he was. Something tightens in her throat and she feels like crying.

“I’ve been dead for years, to his knowledge, he was- and I wasn’t exactly- Look,it’s complicated. But we both agreed that it was for the best.”

Dominik had done his best to stick to her during all the media interest and had suggested that they could work it out somehow. But she had found these little details that he had  started to move on in her absence, internet dating pages, online photos that consistently featured another woman, small things. It hadn’t felt like betrayal or him cheating on her, it had felt like she was the one intruding. That had been the deciding factor in her presenting him with the divorce papers at the same time she told him she might be going back to space.

When he had signed them, he had laughed and looked fondly at her. “You were always more married to the stars than to me anyway.” He  had hugged her, told her to stay safe and in return she had kissed his cheek.

“Okay?” Eiffel says, drawing out the ‘o’ far longer than necessary. One of his hands settles on her shoulder and squeezes it. She leans into the comforting touch slightly. “If you want to talk about it- I mean- You know?”

“Yes, Eiffel, I know,” she says and turns her head to smile at him. “Thanks.” He gives her a weak smile in return and then looks away, chewing on his lips.

“So that’s why you’re here then? To say goodbye?”

Renée takes a deep breath, there is the other thing she’d have liked to avoid as long as possible. “Only if you want to.” His head whips around to her again and the hand still on her shoulder tightens.

“Wait- What?” he asks and she scolds herself for her choice of words.

“There is still an open spot in the team,” she clarifies. “We’re still short a communication officer.”

He swallows down several words, it seems, or maybe just a bad taste. “And you, what? Were thinking of me?”

“Yes.”

His eyes widen and his mouth turns up in a teasing smile. “Aww, that’s kind of cute.”

“Eiffel,” she replies warningly.

“But what makes you think I’d want to go back to Space Odyssey 2000?”

“Nothing,” she says. “I just thought- look never mind. I can understand if you don’t want to.” She can, fully and completely, and she doesn’t even know why she considers returning there. “Besides, you do still have a family here.”

“Yeah,” he says and his voice drops from fake cheerful and scared to something darker. An undercurrent that she’s seen only in few moments, even on the Hephaestus. Moments like the one when they talked about what he did to be sent to prison. His face clouds over with something else a second later, and she’s never sure if he really jumps that fast from emotion and thought to another, or if this is just his natural defense mechanism.

“Wait, don’t you?”

Technically, she does have family here. It’s just that she’s never been close with her extended family to begin with and both her parents are dead, so without Dominik in the picture, there are very few people she has to consider and none who would influence her decision.

It’s still not something she wants to go into detail with Eiffel, of all people, and two can play the deflection game.

“Eiffel, what happened?” She says slowly. “Is Anne alright?”

His hand finally drops from her shoulder and she knows that she has hit a spot.

He gives her a high pitched laughed, that sounds entirely too fake. “She’s fine. Why wouldn’t she be.”

“Eiffel.”

“She’s fine. Perfectly fine. Did you know they have incredible new technology? Her hearing is good as new. She’s fine.”

“Eiffel!”

He stops his rambling and a tired look crosses his face.

“Are you?” she asks.

“Yeah,” He rubs a hand over his forehead. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m always fine,” he says.

It’s her turn then, to put a comforting hand on his arm.

“You know you can-, you know, tell me things too,” she says. God, for grown adults, the two of them are terrible at this, Renée muses.

“I know. It’s just- it’s complicated,” he says and she snorts.

He gives her a weak smile. “Hey, you started it.”

She squeezes his arm and suddenly has the desire to spill her guts to him. “Dominik, he was moving on. And I was moving in another direction. He did try to stick around, but it felt-, it wasn’t right. We would just have ended up hurting each other. More than already. So I- let go.”

“Hey,” Eiffel says quietly and the next thing she knows is that her nose is buried in the stupid shirt he wears and his chin is on her shoulder, while he holds her in an awkward hug. It’s only then that she becomes aware that she is ever so slightly shaking.

“I want to go back, you know?” she continues. “Not to- not there, exactly. But out there. Space. And that’s not where he could follow. And I don’t think I’d want him to.” It’s the first time she admits this to anyone out loud. Eiffel just hums and squeezes her for a second. When he talks, she can feel his breath moving her hair.

“Kate got married again,” Eiffel says quietly, hurriedly, as if he’s going to lose his courage to tell her if he doesn’t do it quickly. “To a really good guy. I met him once. He was so nice I wanted to bash his teeth in just to see if he’d still be so nice.” She quietly laughs into his shoulder at that. It’s not a nice reaction, but she knows the feeling all too well. “Anne, she sent me a letter-” Renée can feel him swallow, his grip on her tightening. “-she. She doesn’t- She-” Eiffel takes a big, shuddering breath and Renée runs a soothing hand over his back, holding him close. “Basically? She’s got a new dad now. The better model,” he laughs quietly into her shoulder. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me. Sent me a goodbye letter and a last picture.”

“Oh Eiffel,” she says quietly.

“You know what’s the worst? The absolute worst?” he asks her rhetorically. “It’s not even because of the accident. It’s because I decided to run off to space.”

She doesn’t quite know what to say to all of that, but she doesn’t need to, as Eiffel continues.

“No, scratch that, the absolute worst? I can’t even blame her or that wanker Todd. I can’t even be really mad. Because he’s the better father for her. And I don’t think it’s right if I just barge into their new family and demand to be part of her life. She deserves better than that.”

“Hey, you aren’t that bad,” she tells him.

“Yeah, but I don’t get to prove that to her.”

She doesn’t know what else to say to that, so she just holds him for a moment longer.

“Hey, Minkowski?” he finally whispers. “Ask me to be your communications officer?”

She extracts herself from his embrace, squares her shoulder and musters her best official voice. This she can do for him. “Douglas Eiffel, will you be my communication officer?”

He cocks his head, as if thinking. “Hm, let me think about that.”

“Oh, you utter-” she smacks his arm in retaliation.

He laughs, at least, and it sounds genuine. “Come one,” he says and gets up, holding out a hand to her. “I’ve got to show you something first.”

She raises an eyebrow at the offered hand.

“Come on,” he coaxes.

“Fine.” She takes his hand and he pulls her up almost effortlessly and drags her to the backdoor.

His backyard is a mess of dead plants and metal strewn around, making it look like a scrapyard. In the middle of it, however, is a gleaming construct of welded metal and electronics.

It takes her a bit to realize what this is meant to be.

“Is that?” she asks in awe, drawing nearer to the construct.

“Yep,” he says, sounding entirely too pleased.

She looks back at him, eyes wide in surprise. “Is it working?”

“Eh,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “Sort of? I can’t get the distance yet I need.”

Her eyes are drawn again to the metal monstrosity. “You really built this on your own?” She’s still in awe. Sometimes Eiffel manages to catch her completely off guard.

It’s the thing with him, if he wants something, he can do incredible things. It’s getting him to want them that is close to impossible.

“What can I say, I’m a genius, sometimes,” he says and steps closer to her. “I wanted to see if I could contact her- them.” It’s a quiet admission and she takes it from there.

“So that’s a yes to my question?” She glances back at him.

He laughs. “Can’t let you go back without having your favorite communications officer at your side,” he says and smiles brightly at her.

“Careful,” she mutters. “Or I might still ask Jacobi.”

“Ouch,” Eiffel says, putting a hand over his heart in mock hurt. “Don’t even threaten that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she says dryly and redirects her gaze back to the pulse beacon relay and the darkening sky behind it, where the first stars are becoming visible.

Next to her she hears Eiffel chuckle. “Hey, Renée?”

“Yes, Doug?” she says, never taking her eyes of the stars slowly emerging in the darkening sky, silently naming each one of them in her head.

His hand finds her in the dwindling light and she squeezes it tightly.

“We’re going home.”

**Author's Note:**

> The beautiful fanart for this fic by solarflarelight can be found on tumblr.


End file.
